Help talk:Poetry

What is the advantage of not using sections header in a long poem that is split into parts? i.e. The Rime of the Ancyent Marinere (1798)--BirgitteSB 19:11, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

I believe that indentation and punctuation should be identical to the published works except where there are know typographical errors. Why should we be making poems grammatically correct or changing mdashes to ndashes?--BirgitteSB 19:11, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

<poem>

I suppose we can rewrite the "Indent" section to use the new poem extension instead? – Quoth 01:14, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Line numbers

Is there a tool for adding line numbers to poems?Easchiff 01:39, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I just created {{pline}} (since {{line}} already exists to do something else), and restored the section on line-numbering that Pathoschild had commented out. {{pline}} is for poems or (especially) plays where you need to do the line-numbering yourself, or make it match an accepted scheme. {{Line numbers}} is apparently an experimental template for works where it doesn't really matter how the line numbers come out; it'll just put a number on every (non-blank?) line. --Quuxplusone 01:33, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

{{ppoem}}

Shouldn't ppoem be mentioned here?

Because it is at least as good if not better, and as of now new people have to be told that it exists since it is not mentioned anywhere. Alien333 (what I did and why I did it wrong) 12:32, 24 February 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333: Agreed, I just came here to make this comment. I'd be happy to work with you to try to document it...but I'm far from expert, so I'd hesitate to document it without an additional set of eyes. -Pete (talk) 14:37, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

I could do it, because since coming here I've more or less done only poetry, and I rummaged in Module:Ppoem a few times. Since this page is already split into two sections (poems tags and manual), we could make a third one for ppoem. I'll try something in my sandbox. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 16:48, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

That's great @Alien333, thank you! I'm happy to review what you put together if you'd like another set of eyes on it before bringing it to the main page, just let me know.

Separately, if you have a moment to look at this page, I'd appreciate experienced perspective. It's a bit of a kludge. I imagine there's a more "standard" way to handle the notes, which refer to line numbers rather than having specific footnotes. But I'm not sure how to improve it. -Pete (talk) 19:32, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth: Here is the draft for ppoem. It's mostly a summary of what ppoem does, although maybe it could be written better. I'd appreciate if you could give me your opinion.

About the footnotes, I would tend to say, that since this is short poem, and these notes will only be used on that page, you might as well just not link them. We're only talking about a 14-line poem, with a note on every line, and you have line numbers. People can just as well scroll down. I'll give you that it is a bit of a lazy answer, but linking from a line to exactly 15 lines above seems a bit superfluous to me. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 21:35, 22 March 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333: Good draft! I made a few suggestions. The part that feels important to me is a few general words at the start about what the template is, that could help somebody see why they might or might not choose to use it. If the words I tried aren't right, feel free to change them, but I would urge that something along those lines should be included. I'm not tied to any of the specifics though. Good comment on the poem; I'm going to reply to that on Author talk:Thomas Wyatt, sorry for getting the conversation more fragmented than it should have been. -Pete (talk) 20:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth :Answering here for this as it seems the right place:

I changed a few details:

• the part about the "relatively stable", since saying "the notice on it says" feels a bit awkward to me.
• removed the "as of", because I think me or other poetry maniacs would notice pretty quickly if ppoem was broken, and then update it.
• linked to scribunto in the sentence about lua, for newcomers.

I think it is a good idea to have an introduction. Do you have another idea of what we could put there?

There would also be the question of where to put it, which might need a bit of restructuring, except if we split it up in the already existing parts. I think I would advocate for splitting it up. Going to start on sandbox. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 07:09, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Done. I split it up to match the subsections of "formatting", and my eventual idea would be to sort of merge the two. Please take a look. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 07:51, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

(arbitrary outdent)

@Alien333: I'm impressed with your expansion. Based on what you did, which went like 90% toward this but not all the way, I made what I think is a slight further improvement: I tweaked it so that it more explicitly first introduces the default settings, and then separately describes how the syntax and CSS can be used to adjust the defaults. I made a few other adjustments too; again, merely suggestions, hopefully helpful ones. I'm happy to step back with the tweaks if you prefer to just post it and be "done" for now, it looks really good overall. Just let me know if you have a preferred pace or level of perfectionism.

I'm not fully grasping the distinction between merged vs. split up -- only because I haven't spent enough time studying the page and your comments. I think you've been plenty clear, my brain just isn't up to that part at the moment. So my edits are only to the first section, similar edits could be applied to the split up version if you like, but I haven't touched that yet. -Pete (talk) 00:50, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

Oh, and a point where I didn't make any changes, but I'm confused -- maybe the text can be clarified to educate me as well as true beginners :)

You initially mention CSS as being tied to the style parameter, which I take to mean that a class would be set for the entire poem, using that parameter. But it's not clear to me that that is commonly used, so I don't know if it belongs on this overview page or not? Then, however, you again mention CSS in a way I have seen it frequently put to effective use: through single brackets, to format individual parts within a ppoem. That seems to me like the part that needs to be documented here, and if CSS is the underlying technical mechanism (?) that should be mentioned in a way that either leaves out the "style" paramater, or else helps the reader understand the relation between the "style" parameter and the single bracket syntax. I'm of course trying to describe something that I don't fully understand myself, so I hope I've made myself clear enough to convey the thought; let me know if I should clarify. -Pete (talk) 01:00, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

I first made the "merged", which was a condensed summary of ppoem's page.

But since this page is split by the different things that need to be done, I also split my summary to match the existing sections of the page.

It's essentially the same content.

Regarding styles: the style parameter is to apply inline css (i.e. not a class, the definitions that would be in a class, such as for example "background-color:black") to the whole poem, and the {Class} notation adds a class (that is defined in the css file) to a line/stanza. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 17:24, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

@Peteforsyth Also, a side note: I think we have a problem with documentation in general here. At some point I looked at Wikisource:Glossary, which is at the top of the beginner's guide, and it was (and still is) barely finished. Same for templates, we have many, many formatting templates, but most of them are not mentioned on any help pages, so you have to search in the category tree (which takes a long while, especially when you don't exactly know what name it would have). It's happened to me to recreate a template that already exists because I couldn't find it. The way I learned mostly everything is by mimicking what I saw other users do (without understanding) and wandering round the Template ns (that's how I know about {{phantom}}). I think it would be a good idea to make an effort, or a project, or whatever, and see if others would be ready to help to make the help pages better and more up-to-date. (an easier way to find templates would also be nice, but I don't really know how it would be done). What do you think ? Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 00:22, 30 March 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333 Absolutely, I agree. There's much work to be done creating/updating/improving documentation, and I've enjoyed working on this with you, so expanding the effort would be a good project. As you've probably noticed, I'm only sporadically available for this sort of thing these days...I do find time pretty regularly, it can just be difficult to predict when that will be. Do you have a proposed starting point? -Pete (talk) 13:58, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Not really any specific ideas for now, no. I don't have much time either these days but I should be available soon. Do you think we are good to go for this ? Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 14:10, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

@Alien333 I just made a few final (haha) tweaks, but yes, I think it is ready to go. Really nicely done. -Pete (talk) 18:51, 1 April 2024 (UTC)

Done. Not sure about the naming of the "Other" sections, though. Did not fully reread everything, there might still be errors around, but it's done. Alien333 (what I did — why I did it wrong) 19:29, 1 April 2024 (UTC)